We lived in Hawai’i for four years in the mid-1990s and got to experience Christmas in a different climate and culture.
That meant holiday-themed t-shirts and the exciting arrival of the Christmas trees the day after Thanksgiving.
In those years, the arrival was a banner headline across the front page of the newspaper. Only one ship full of trees came and it came on the same weekend every year–which usually was a month before Christmas day.
There was no point in waiting until closer to Christmas in hopes of purchasing a fresher tree–no more trees were coming and the traditional evergreens were not grown in the islands. So, we bought our tree early and sought ways to keep the needles on until Jesus’ actual birthday celebration.
You’ll remember Oah’u is only ten degrees above the equator. Most of the time we luxuriated in a balmy 72 degrees, pretty much year round.
Pine needles tend to fall off trees when the weather is warm. We combated the drying out of the tree by consistently pouring cool water into the reservoir at its base. By the time Christmas finally arrived, we usually had a few needles left on the tree and a pile covering our gifts like scented confetti.
Fortunately the needles were easy to sweep up from the tile floor.
My neighbor, however, was more enterprising, and one year she invested in an irrigation system–basically a Christmas tree IV line. She kept the bottle filled (it was a two-liter plastic bottle in our day) and tested the needles for moisture every morning.
It was quite a contraption and required special rigging as I recall. Water frequently spilled on the tile floor and she had to be careful not to get the packages wet.
The needles still fell off the tree.
Another neighbor didn’t even bother. They hauled a small potted palm tree into the house and hung their ornaments on it.
Worked just fine and no clean up.
Those exercises reminded me of an earlier Christmas tree back in our Connecticut years where Douglas firs grew in our yard. We even had snow on the ground.
This particular Christmas one of my sons was three and very excited about having a tree his father cut down actually inside his house. We’d learned our lessons the year before and knew to hang the precious ornaments high and leave the soft, non-breakable ones on the lower limbs.
Our son had free reign to move those lower ornaments around the tree wherever he liked. He spent a lot of time rearranging the tree, careful to avoid the lights. I left him to his pleasure.
A tree is supposed to be fun, right?
A salute to the joyous season and cause for enjoyment, right?
He thought so too until the day I heard a crash in the living room
I dashed in to find the tree had fallen over
onto my son
whose arms and legs were waving wildly under the tree.
He was screaming.
I had to bite my lip, hard, not to laugh out loud.
I wish, now, I had run for the camera.
Instead, like a good mother I pulled the tree off the little boy–who could not believe what had just happened!
Hhis father tethered it tot he wall when he got home, but my son didn’t touch the tree the rest of that holiday season.
The next year we set it up in the play pen.
Oh, our diasters were never as good as in the movies, but they’ve made for gentle and fond stories.
Even the one about the frog who lived in the tree one entire Christmas. What did he eat? Why couldn’t we find him? Why did he croak all night?
How about you? Any Christmas tree disasters at your house?
On another note: I’ll be participating in an author blog hop next Wednesday. This is an opportunity to get the “behind the scenes” information about recent novels and writers. You’re welcome to start today with my friend Kay Strom’s blog post about her book The Love of Divena, or Sherry Kyle writing about her recently published The Heart Stone.
As for me, next Wednesday I’ll be answering questions about my Bridging Two Hearts, due out February 15, 2013. Join us!
Thoughts? Reactions? Lurker?